1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle with a noncontact drive mechanism capable of noncontact drive for propelling the vehicle in a state of noncontact with a road surface and contact drive for propelling the same by means of frictional drive in contact with the road surface, and more particularly to a vehicle with a noncontact drive mechanism using a propelling force derived from magnetic induction as noncontact drive.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in the case of a vehicle such as an automobile for running on a road surface, the chassis is directly supported on the road via tires. Accordingly, with such a vehicle, since the tires are brought into contact with the road surface and power transmission is effected through friction between the tires and the road surface, the vehicle is adapted to run by means of contact drive between the tires and the road surface. With such a vehicle, the wheels can be steered and a driving system is mounted on the chassis, so that the vehicle can run almost anywhere and, therefore, the degree of its freedom is very large.
In general, roads include not only paved and unpaved roads but also roads with differing conditions, such as frozen roads, snowy roads, sandy roads, and muddy roads. Since the conditions of the surface of these roads, including the coefficient of friction, .mu., vary, the operationability of the conventional vehicle running on the road surface through contact drive, as described above, is much dependent on the road surface conditions. For instance, in the case of the road surface having a low coefficient of friction (low .mu. road) as in the case of a frozen road, there are cases where the tires undergo slippage, thereby making it impossible to perform frictional drive efficiently. In addition, it becomes impossible to run the vehicle depending on the condition of the road surface, and there are cases where the degree of freedom for a vehicle running on the road surface is restricted.
In addition, even on a road having a relatively high coefficient of friction, in the case of super-high-speed running, there are problems in that the tires undergo slippage, with the result that it is not only impossible to perform frictional drive efficiently, but also the slippage makes the wear of the tires more intense.
Furthermore, if an attempt is made to make possible running on a low .mu. road and running through noncontact drive, problems are encountered in cornering and straight line stability.